Lara closed the door gently behind her. Sounds of the cleanup staff had drizzled down into a quiet group of shufflings, tapping wingtips, glasses being moved, and the banquet's refuse being polished away into memory. She could hear their measured, dutiful motions through the crack beneath the oak door. Most of the guests had retreated to valeted vehicles brought forth after the slow ease of the event, others had retired to guest bedrooms, others still driven home by staff. The sound of pattering rain from high windows left cracked had filled their vacancy with pattering sighs.

It was this sound that Lara relished as she heard the door click closed. The rain swept itself along the grounds in great washing arches of spring rain, edging out the remains of winter. It reminded her of the moisture between her legs, a dull cloying feeling that had maintained itself throughout much of the night. Her hands went to her navel, warming them between either leg for just a moment.

"Thinking of me?"

Francis' voice wafted from the corner of the room. An antique wing chair sat in one corner of her bedroom, and he lounged in it without any sign of trespass. Which he was.

Lara tried successfully not to jump out of her skin. "Good heavens, don't do that. I'm exhausted, I hardly expected you to, to-"

"Stalk you?" He stood up. Broad shoulders. Slightly rounded chin, reflections of ghost light from the window making him seem vividly translucent, somehow. She felt wispy from the alcohol. "I just wanted to try again."

"I have no doubt of that." She tossed the heels she'd retrieved from the guest bedroom on the floor.

"And I suppose you want something from me?"

"Not exactly." He began to try and close the gap between them in the darkened room. There was a draft from the window left ajar in the other room, chilling her skin. Maybe it was just him. "I don't suppose you met anyone at the party?"

"No, just you. Don't you think I'd be with company right now if I did?" She recalled for a moment the words that had come out of her mouth and ruminated on how it made her sound. "Don't answer that.

Look, I've been up for twenty hours, I think this isn't the best time. "

"Four poster oak bed. Canopy and everything. Very alluring." No jacket, just a vest, cumberbund, trousers. Hair wet. So cocky. Francis had one hand on his hip and looked just as good as he imagined.

"Stop it."

"A lot of things we could do on it."

"Quite. -I- could god, you're terrible. " But she felt her self restraint give way to something more base, and that urge bubbled up again. Francis was not the brightest man on earth. His attempts to be Claus von Bülow were tragically misplaced, ego overinflated by a designer haircut and competent genes. He was also her junior, by three years. But he was warm, and present, and she could smell the flesh of him, like incense and orchards and pine.

She felt foolish when it dawned on her he'd slowly been closing the gap between them.

"Come on. Old times sake?"

The ruins had been cool and smeared with dirt. Every sense had seemed tenderised after the trip. Her first shower in over a week had been almost agonising in its tantalisation. And for weeks, she had felt that urge pulse larger.

Oh, to hell with it.

After the shock had subsided, Lara let herself fall back on her heels, then on her bottom. The ground was colder than she realized, and her panties felt unpleasantly sticky. Her knees ached. Her jaw felt like a broken hinge and her legs vaguely like jelly. She felt a physical satisfaction that unnerved her in its transitory elusiveness, and an undesirable mounting of exhaustion . Climbing onto the bed next to Francis, Lara paid no mind when he wrapped his arms around her, pushed his chest to her back. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she felt but not understood the mild disdain that had formed. But it was what the body required, and she would sate it again, sometime.

She thought, briefly, of the party. Of that Hal character. Oddly, she hoped it wouldn't be raining when they had lunch. Outside, the rain battered the flume and the windows and the brick and cobblestone arches of her home. It would be eons before it would let up.

And sleep, mercifully, took no time at all.